How (Not) to Compare Yourself to the Jews

As reported by the New York Times, Reverend Raneiro Cantalamessa has compared the recent attacks on the Catholic Church over their sexual abuse scandal to the historical persecution of the Jews. The article mentions that one of Italy’s newspapers, La Repubblica ran a story in which they alleged (unattributed) that some within the Church felt that the vehement criticism being focused on the Catholic Church right now is in part or whole directed by a Jewish New York lobby. Along those lines, it ought to be noted that the Vatican itself called The New York Times out over its coverage and op-ed pieces related to the sexual abuse controversy.

Now, I don’t have any particular opinion on the abuse aspect of this story. It happened in Germany, I’m not Catholic, I don’t think the Catholic Church has any real political significance outside the Vatican City, etc. etc. But I do want to point out this can help all Gentiles in a question we often ask ourselves:

When is it okay to compare our suffering to that of the Jews?

Hrm… a toughie…Maybe if we're circumcised? Is it okay then?

This can kind of be tricky, because the Jews are arguably the most historically persecuted people on the planet. They’ve been enslaved, they’ve been kicked out their homeland (more than once), pretty much universally attacked by the Europeans until Hitler decided he needed to one-up all the other Europeans through systematic genocide. In fact, a Jewish man invented the word “genocide” specifically so that people could classify the Holocaust as a crime.

So, when you’re thinking of working in “this is a lot like what happened to the Jews” into your speech, take a moment a think about what’s going on. Does it involve six million people being rounded up into camps and gassed? Because if it doesn’t…maybe you should take a moment and tone down your comparison. This is the problem the right wing is having right now, where they started by calling Obama Hitler, and then realized that Hitler’s the top, so they’ve had to combine it so that Obama’s a sort of Hitler-Stalin-Mao super-dictator. It get’s really complicated, as I’ve mentioned previously. And we’ve only settled government-mandated healthcare. What happens when Obama’s other promised reforms start to move? They’re gonna have to start referencing Genghis Khan.

This a picture of Bush shaking hands with a Mongolian guy dressed as Genghis Khan. Thank you, Internet.

Now, Father Cantalamessa (or, Daddy Messy, as I’m gonna call him, for ease) doesn’t credit himself for thinking up this comparison. No, instead, that goes to an “unnamed Jewish friend.” Daddy Messy claims that his “Jewish Friend” wrote that:

“I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole word…The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”

Really? Your Jewish friend called Catholics “the faithful?” You know, that doesn’t seem very…what’s the word…Jewish, to me. Especially considering all the stuff the Catholic Church is responsible for in terms of its part in the persecution of the Jews. You know, it almost sounds to me like he made up his Jewish friend. Why wouldn’t his buddy there want his name mentioned? Did he not know the Vatican would get play in the press on this? I don’t think Daddy Messy’s Hebrew Pal is real. I think it’s like when white people explain some aspect of black culture, and source it to their “black friend.” It fools no one, we generally let it pass in the moment, and then later on we make snarky comments about what a racist you are. Same thing here.

The Catholic Church really should’ve known better, considering all the flak they caught over the attempts to canonize Pope Pius XII, who’s record on the Holocaust still remains incredibly controversial. Some people claim he did all he could and more than anyone else, other’s claim he could’ve done more, other’s (like the Neo-Nazis) probably claim he could’ve done less. Here’s a picture, for reference.

In my opinion, if you get this close to Hitler, anything less than punching him in the face constitutes anti-Semitism

Oh, and then don’t forget that Pope Benedict himself, who’s at the center of this whole “keep your hands off the kids” controversy for his role in lightly punishing the offending priest, was a member of the Hitler Youth. To be fair to the Pope, he was conscripted when the law made the Hitler Youth mandatory for all Aryans, and his father allegedly taught him that Nazism was evil, which he saw as being anti-Catholic. But that doesn’t prove a lack of anti-Semitism. Hitler did have an antagonistic attitude towards the Catholic Church (the late-game part of a hypothetical German victory in World War II would have involved the eventual enslavement of the Italians and a dismantling of the Vatican). And it means Benedict was considered an Aryan. Just because Papa Benedict didn’t like Hitler’s policies towards Catholicism doesn’t mean he also despised the rabid anti-Semitism.

Oh, and one more thing. The Jews were persecuted for completely unfounded reasons, like “controlling the world’s money” or “causing Germany to lose World War I,” stuff like that. The Catholic Church is being attacked (and Daddy Messy’s “Jewish friend” called it “violent,” but that’s not true) for a sexual abuse scandal that’s actually proven to have happened. By their own admission! What’s being attacked is just how complicit Church Leadership was in that. That’s not a parallel to Jewish persecution. If people were saying “the Catholic Church is bad because they’re using space aliens to control our brains” then it would be a fair comparison. But that’s not what’s happening.

You can learn a lot from the Catholic Church. Their history essentially reads as one long list of things to avoid doing when running an organized religion, with a few really amazingly positive things mixed in between (like the Franciscans). This week, they dropped the ball again, and accidentally decided they were like the Jews.